Our company, Onboardify, runs our customer service on Asana – so good communication with customers is essential to their satisfaction. As the CEO, I believe it’s critical to reduce the time to respond, and increase clarity in responses. Here is what has helped us achieve clarity in Asana:
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First, bring all client emails directly into Asana. No more “did you see that email from our largest client - she seems upset?” water cooler conversations. If it’s in email, it must be in Asana. We have a little edge above everyone else in getting those emails directly into Asana projects.
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Use Asana custom fields to know what stage a customer request is in. Often, a customer issue requires escalation to engineering. In our custom fields, we ask our developers to always first estimate a request, then mark it in progress, then mark it when it is deployed. A QA engineer looks for everything deployed, so it can reach the tested phase. Custom fields helps us do the baton-handoffs faster.
- Show everyone in client management how to run the “What is the task distribution by Assignee?” report. You’ll be surprised how many people don’t know how to create something like this in Asana. But, once they do, they know exactly who’s working on what, and can communicate back to clients.
So those are three tips we’d like to offer anyone who’s managing client requests that require a handoff from the client manager to internal teams. Knowing what needs to be tested, for example, is important for anyone in creative agencies, or in technology teams. Knowing how many items are open, and who’s working on them is helpful to estimate when a project will complete. These greatly improve communication internally, and then back over to clients who need to know.
Vik Chaudhary. Onboardify.
Dossier: An app to organize customer conversations in Asana